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In what both sides called "a landmark deal," the top ten Wall Street investment firms today paid a $200
billion "advance against future crimes" to the State of New York, enabling the firms to commit up to 300
new crimes a year.

Timothy Stonefield, a spokesman for the Wall Street firms, said that the huge advance payment would
help "bring white-collar crime on Wall Street into the twenty-first century."

In the past, crimes committed by the Wall Street firms have been dealt with in a case-by-case basis
through an expensive, time-consuming process known as "the criminal justice system," Mr. Stonefield
said.

But the payment of the so-called "crime advance" would enable the big Wall Street firms to mislead
their customers on an ongoing basis "knowing that the prosecution has already been bought off," he
added.

On Wall Street, stocks for the big investment firms rallied on the news of the $200 billion crime
advance, as investors seemed to agree that it would streamline the firms' ability to commit crimes in
the future.

In related news, one day after being banned from the securities industry, Henry Blodget, the former
Merrill Lynch analyst known for his uniformly bullish reports on tech stocks, was named Information
Minister for the new government of Iraq.

"A fully democratic government in Baghdad should be up and running by Thursday at the latest," Mr.
Blodget said.